Scottish Local Government Finance Statistics (SLGFS) 2019-20

Footnotes

1. The contributable amount is equivalent to the gross amount paid by bill payers, net of any reliefs which are funded by the Scottish Government. Note that it is not net of any reliefs funded by local authorities themselves, so it differs from the collectable amount (the total amount collected from ratepayers).

2. Final contributions to the pool are based on councils' provisional estimates of their contributable amount at the start of the year (their PCA) plus any increases in the previous year's outturn compared to the previous year's PCA. Final contributions to the pool (and distributions to councils) are set out in the Non-Domestic Rating Account and the resultant reconciliation figures are shown in Annex C.

3. An analysis of changes in the RV of non-domestic properties in Scotland following the 2017 revaluation can be found online

4. An exception to this was the seven year cycle following the 2010 revaluation. The next revaluation having been delayed due to COVID, the current cycle will be six years with the next revaluation scheduled for 2023. Following that, revaluations will take place every three years.

5. The Valuation Roll is continually updated and the NDRI for 2019-20 won't be based solely on the snapshot of the Roll at April 2019. The composition of the Roll as at April 2020 is also shown in Table 2.14b, Table 2.15a, and Chart 2.10a in the associated Excel file. The latest Valuation Roll statistics are available online.

6. Since 2007-08, Scottish Ministers have committed to equalisation of the Scottish poundage rate with that in England, although in 2019-20 the poundage is 49.0p, which is around 0.1p less than for England.

7. In 2020-21 the LBS was replaced with two new rates – the Intermediate Property Rate (IPR), set at 1.3p with RV threshold of £51,000, and the Higher Property Rate (HPR), set at 2.6p with an RV threshold of £95,000.

8. Statistics on the revaluation appeals are published quarterly in the NDR Revaluation Appeals Statistics publication.

9. For 2020-21 the poundage was increased below inflation to give a poundage of 49.8p, although the increase was offset by a 1.6% universal relief automatically applied to all properties effectively delivering a poundage freeze.

10. The change from RPI to CPI in 2018-19 was in line with demand from businesses and supported by the independent Barclay Review of non-domestic rates which reported in 2017. The UK Government committed from 2020-21 to using CPI to uprate the equivalent of the poundage, although The Scottish Government is not legislatively bound to this upper limit.

11. Figures as reported via local authorities' NDRI Audited Returns.

12. More information on NDR reliefs in 2019-20 can be found online. Annual NDR Reliefs publications are available online, with the 2019 publication showing details of relief awards as at 31 May 2019.

13. From 2018-19 this was capped at a rateable value threshold of £1.5 million.

14. 'IFRS 9 unrealised gains' relates to the difference between the fair value of investments at 31 March, compared with their original cost. This net gain is 'unrealised' because the underlying investments have not yet been sold. More information on this is provided in Chapter 4.1.

15. The Scottish Government provides two types of capital grant funding to local authorities – a General Capital Grant (GCG) and a number of specific or ring-fenced grants.

16. Convention of Scottish Local Authorities

17. Including the Scottish Non Profit Distributing (NPD) model